Australia: Handsome Heroes: His Secret Love-Child

‘Karen died twenty minutes ago,’ Charles told her. ‘Cal and Emily worked with everything they had, but they failed. Cal’s just talked to her parents.’ He hesitated. ‘Gina, when things like this happen, Cal withdraws. He’s out in the hospital garden right now, and he needs someone.’

She stared at him, appalled. ‘What are you asking? I don’t…I can’t…’

‘Yes, you can,’ he told her, and his voice became stern. ‘You’ve thrown a hell of a shock at our Cal this afternoon. The least you can do is mop up the mess.’

‘It’s nothing to do with me.’

‘Who are you kidding?’ he said roughly. ‘But you choose. Go to bed or go and see if you can get through to Cal. But if you go to bed now…well, I don’t see how you can.’ He stared around the room and his face grew even more grim. ‘There are things that all of us can’t walk away from. You know that as well as everyone here.’

CHAPTER FIVE

SHE should go to bed. She’d do more harm than good if she approached Cal now, she thought, and CJ needed her. She made her way resolutely across to the doctors’ quarters, avoiding the garden, sure that she’d made the right decision.

CJ wasn’t in bed. Instead, there was a note pinned to his pillow.

Dear Dr Lopez

CJ couldn’t sleep and he seems a bit upset. We’ve got a new puppy at our place. Me and Mr Grubb are in the little blue house over the far side of the hospital and hubby’s just come over to tell me the pup’s making a fuss. So I thought I’d take CJ home. I’m guessing he and the pup might sleep together in our spare bedroom. I asked Dr Wetherby and he reckons you’ll be busy till late and us taking the littlie will give you a chance to sleep late tomorrow—but come over and get him if you want him back tonight. Or telephone and we’ll bring him straight back. I’ll let you know if he frets.

Dora Grubb

So CJ didn’t need her, Gina thought as she stared down at the letter. This was a note written by a competent woman who Charles trusted. CJ would be overjoyed to be asked to sleep with a puppy.

But where did that leave her?

She wanted to hug CJ, she thought bleakly, acknowledging that her ability to hug her small son in times of crisis was a huge gift. But to wake him now, to wake the Grubbs and the puppy as well, just so she could be hugged…

Grow up, she told herself, and tried to feel grown-up.

She glanced at her watch. It was three in the morning. She should shower and slide between the covers and sleep.

She knew she wouldn’t sleep.

Damn, she wanted CJ.

Cal was…Cal was…

Go to bed!

She took a grip—sort of—and walked over to pull the curtains closed. Then she paused.

Cal was down at the water’s edge. The shoreline was two hundred yards from where she was standing but his figure was unmistakable.

He was just…standing.

So what? she demanded of herself. She should leave him be.

But he was Cal. She stared down the beach at his still figure and she felt the same wrenching of her heart that she’d felt all those years before. It was as if this man was a part of her and to walk away from him would be tantamount to taking away a limb.

She’d had to walk away before, she thought dully, for all sorts of reasons. And she’d survived.

But CJ was safely asleep and there was nothing standing between herself and Cal.

Nothing but five years of pain, and a desolate childhood that had destroyed his trust in everyone.

He’d never get over it, she told herself. He was damaged goods. Dangerous.

But still she couldn’t walk away. Not now. There was only so much resolve one woman was capable of, and she’d run right out of it.

She opened her door and she walked down to the beach to meet him.

He sensed rather that saw her approach. What was it about this woman that gave him a sixth sense—that made him feel different, strange, just because she was on the same continent as he was? he wondered. She was walking along the beach to reach him and he braced himself as if expecting to be hit.

She’d hurt him.

No, he’d hurt her, he thought savagely. She’d been pregnant and he hadn’t been there for her.

He would have been there if she’d said…

Liar. He would have run.

‘I’m sorry, Cal,’ she said gently behind him, and he flinched. But he didn’t turn.

‘What do you want?’ It was a low growl. He sounded angry, which was grossly unfair but he was past being fair tonight.

Maybe she sensed it. She sounded softly sympathetic—not responding with her own anger.

‘It’s been a dreadful day, Cal. To have CJ thrown at you, and then copping such deaths…’

‘I couldn’t save her,’ he said savagely into the night. He’d left his shoes back on the dry sand and rolled up his jeans before he’d come down the water’s edge. The water was now washing over his feet, taking out some of the heat but not enough. Still he didn’t turn and Gina came and stood beside him and stared out at the same sea he was seeing. She was wearing jeans and T-shirt and sandals, but she didn’t seem to notice that she was wading into the shallows regardless. Neither did he. ‘I worked so damned hard and I couldn’t save her. Of all the useless…’

‘You can only do so much, Cal. You’re a doctor. Not a magician.’

‘The pressure was too much,’ he said, picking up a ribbon of kelp that had washed against his legs and hurling it into an oncoming breaker. It didn’t go far. He walked further into the waves to retrieve it and then hurled it again. ‘Did you know we actually split her skull, trying to save her?’ he demanded. ‘We drilled a burrhole, but the whole brain was so bruised we realised the pressure was killing her. So we split…’

Gina was beside him—but not too close. They were up to their knees in the surf and the rolling breakers were reaching their thighs. She didn’t touch him. They were standing three feet apart, and she was staring out to sea, and he knew that she was seeing what he was seeing. A dying child.

‘That’s heroic surgery, Cal,’ she said softly. ‘Performed as a last-ditch stand in a hopeless case. But it was hopeless. You can’t blame yourself when something like that doesn’t work. Medicine has limits.’

‘Yeah.’

She took a step closer and laid a hand on his arm. He flinched.

‘Don’t.’

‘Don’t touch you, do you mean?’ she asked. ‘Cal, that’s what you’ve been saying for years. You’re so afraid of people being close.’

‘What do you know about what I’m like now?’